Voltage regulators that provide AC/DC rectification typically include a full wave voltage rectifier stage such as, for example, a diode bridge, a main Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) stage, and a Power Factor Correction (PFC) stage inserted between the line and the main SMPS. The SMPS provides regulation of an output waveform and the PFC stage draws a sinusoidal current from the line and provides Direct Current (DC) voltage to the main SMPS. For many systems to operate properly, it is desirable for the PFC stage to include a feed-forward circuit and a brown-out detection circuit. The feed-forward circuit provides an input-to-output transfer function that is independent of the input voltage which eases loop compensation whereas the brown-out detection circuit disables the converter if the line magnitude is too low. What is more, it is desirable for the brown-out detection circuit to include a hold-time component to ignore short interruptions to the mains, thereby allowing the power supply to continue operating when these short interruptions occur. Typically, brown-out detection circuits capable of ignoring short mains interruptions are comprised of filter circuits. A drawback with using filter circuits is that they degrade the response to line variations because the brown-out detection circuit and the feed-forward circuit receive input signals from a common input pin. Thus, designers have had to trade-off the performance of feed-forward circuitry with the performance of brown-out detection circuits.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a circuit and method for detecting brown-out conditions that meet desired hold-time specifications and that are capable of providing a feed-forward transfer function that is independent of the line magnitude. It would be of further advantage for the circuit and method to be cost efficient to implement.